Obama has himself to blame for Muslim problem

When we first learned that Obama had become a 'Christian' at Rev Wright's Church of Christ, we began to question how he could sit in this church for 20+ years and not hear the black separatists message or acknowledge the fact the fact of Wright and Farrakhan's close relationship. If a black Christian minister hanging around together, traveling together, and giving the National of Islam leader Farrakhan an award doesn't make you go 'what?' nothing will.  That is exactly the relationship between Wright and Farrakhan who Obama also knew well.

Then the Obama campaign attacked all of us who questioned whether Obama was Muslim back then as it was common knowledge in Chicago that Rev Wright who was a former Muslim who was open to Muslims coming to his church pretending to be Christian for business purposes.  Why not for political purposes as well?

The fact that the Obama campaign insisted that Hussein, his middle name, not be used during the campaign but after he was elected, they embraced that name was another troubling problem about his link to Islam. Then we had the gotcha moment on ABC where he said Muslim and was corrected to Christian and the beautiful Islamic prayer moment all leading to many of us thinking his loyalties were to Islam, the religion of most of his Kenyan family. Since being elected, we have not changed our opinions and in fact, Obama's words and actions have strengthened our belief if he is not Muslim he leans very much toward the Islamic religion over Christianity and Jewish religions.

Obama has himself to blame for Muslim problem
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
August 20, 2010
(AP)

In 1985, Barack Obama had just arrived in Chicago for his new job as a community organizer when he headed to Smitty’s Barbershop, a tiny storefront on the South Side. As Smitty cut his hair, Obama listened to the men in the shop talk politics and racial grievance. When the barber finished, he handed Obama a mirror and said, “Haircut’s ten dollars. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Barack.”

“Barack, huh,” Smitty responded. “You a Muslim?”

“Grandfather was,” Obama said, according to his memoir Dreams From My Father.

Smitty’s question, which Obama didn’t exactly answer, prefigured a controversy that continues to this day.

A new poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows that 18 percent of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. That is up from the 12 percent who believed that in October 2008, just before Obama was elected president.

At the same time, the number of Pew respondents who say Obama is a Christian — in Dreams From My Father, he describes his conversion to Christianity under the tutelage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright — has declined from 51 percent in October 2008 to 34 percent now. And the number of people who say they don’t know Obama’s religion is growing, from 32 percent back then to 43 percent today.

The White House blames the situation on a “misinformation campaign” from Obama’s opponents. But Obama and his aides might also blame themselves for the way they’ve handled the Muslim issue over the years.

The question did not come out of nowhere. As Obama said, his grandfather was a Muslim. His father was raised a Muslim before becoming, by Obama’s account, “a confirmed atheist.” Obama’s stepfather was a Muslim. His half-sister Maya told the New York Times that her “whole family was Muslim.”

Obama spent two years in a Muslim school in Indonesia and later, in a conversation with the Times’ Nicholas Kristof, described the Arabic call to prayer, the beginning of which he recited by heart, as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” Given all that, it is entirely accurate and fair to describe Obama as having Muslim roots.

Read more at the Washington Examiner